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Justin Trudeau, when he had his soul patch and long hair, seemed to be self-consciously adopting the style of d’Artagnan, the leader of the Three Musketeers.

This fall we ought to learn whether he actually can handle a sabre, or is more like an actor, ready to strut and fret his hour upon the stage, making a good show, harmlessly wielding an actor’s prop.

If he is to become Liberal leader, he will be crossing blades with some real sword fighters: Pauline Marois and Tom Mulcair.

Trudeau took his first swipe at Mulcair on Thursday, when the provincial Liberals in Kitchener-Waterloo sent out a robocall from Trudeau, telling voters there they shouldn’t vote NDP in a provincial byelection because the NDP would be bad for national unity.

Since Marois had just led the Parti Quebecois to a narrow victory in Quebec, reporters asked the NDPers if they still think Quebec should be able to separate with a vote of 50 per cent plus one. The answer: They do, but they’d rather not talk about it. The NDP adopted that position at their convention in Quebec City in 2006, when they were laying the groundwork for their patient and ultimately successful electoral seduction of Quebec. The Sherbrooke Declaration was the first really nice bouquet they offered to Quebecers, who had a long record of resisting the NDP’s awkward anglophone entreaties. The document declares that Quebec has the right to self-determination, and that the NDP would respect the result of a referendum carried out under a process established by the National Assembly in Quebec.

This was a change of policy for the party, which had previously backed Jean Chretien’s Clarity Act — although Jack Layton sometimes gave different answers in French and English on the question.

The Clarity Act calls for the House of Commons in Ottawa to determine whether the question posed in a referendum is clear, and also to determine whether an unspecified “clear majority” of voters in Quebec had expressed their will. Liberals dislike the Sherbrooke Declaration, and I can see their point. In the event — much to be dreaded — that Quebecers do have another referendum, it would likely be better if the prime minister of Canada has not promised to honour the result. If Marois calls a referendum, and Mulcair is the prime minister, she will be able to say that he has promised to respect the result, so everyone should just relax and vote Oui!

I expect some stern-faced senior servants of the Crown in Ottawa have already drafted a letter for Mulcair, explaining why he must change his position, to be delivered the day he wins power. Whatever its failings, it was the Sherbrooke Declaration that allowed the NDP to send a bunch of (quasi-) federalist MPs to Ottawa and un-Bloc the House of Commons. The document rarely featured in debates in Quebec, but it inoculated the NDP against attack.

In the French-language leaders’ debate, Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe desperately tried and failed to leave a mark on Layton because Layton had anticipated them all and neutralized them. The result? Duceppe lost his seat and the Bloc was reduced to a four-MP rump. On Tuesday, Quebecers gave Marois a razor-thin mandate to govern the province, and she intends to try to wrest more power from Ottawa. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with few Quebec seats to worry about, is in a position to ignore those demands, and urge her to focus on the economy. Mulcair, though, will have to engage her. The two are veterans of the vicious federalist-sovereignist knife fights of the national assembly.

They can both be expected to do everything they can to maim one another this fall. Marois will demand that the NDP support her campaigns for greater autonomy, putting nasty pressure on MPs who recently were students or bartenders. Mulcair, who has a real taste for the rapier, surely has a plan to parry his old enemy’s attacks. It should be fun to watch, if you have a strong stomach.

Meanwhile, Trudeau will be running for the Liberal leadership, an event that promises to be a beauty pageant with one contestant. Trudeau is a wild card. He is unusually charismatic, and he showed formidable toughness and strategic sense in his boxing match this spring. But he has made amateurish mistakes. He was schooled by Jason Kenney over whether honour killings are barbaric, and looked like a substitute drama teacher when he had to apologize for saying that he might become a separatist if Canada adopted Harper’s values.

It is possible that voters will forgive him for his missteps, as they often forgave his father, which makes it hard to predict his political future. But it was likely unwise to send a robocall attacking the NDP in a doomed Ontario provincial riding, and I’d like to know if he would say what he said in English in Kitchener to a French audience in Montreal.

This is the kind of battle in which Trudeau must now test himself, and we will see soon enough whether he is ready to trade blows with real fighters.

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